Railfans get pretty excited when something new enters the railroad world. Be it a group of heritage units from a Class One, an excursion with restored steam, a new short line or simply newly painted power, word gets around and excitement builds as fans try to document and view these events. I was fortunate to be involved in this fervor. I managed to stumble into a happenstance train meet with locomotives that rarely congregated together, much less be found working where I discovered them. I was off on a week-long excursion out West, partially traveling for my employer and partly sightseeing. My destination was Denver, sent there by my employer to see clients to discuss coal contracts with local mining interests. After meetings the first part of the week, I was free to take my time driving back across the Midwest and railfan along the way. I had eyes on photographing the Joint Line out of Denver Colorado followed by chasing the Union Pacific Transcontinental main. My first day on the road produced some good pictures and I found myself spending the night near the Colorado border. Not wanting to fill another day with more BNSF or UP, I loaded up my laptop at the hotel and looked around for railfanning ideas on the Internet. I ran across picture of a Kansas Pacific Railroad (KP) grain train somewhere in Eastern Colorado, moving eastward to Kansas City, MO, The KP was known to me, but I had never seen it in person. I made up my mind to follow it eastward the next day. Kansas City was my eventual destination, where I would turn south and follow the Georgia Road Illinois Central lines southward toward my home in Alabama.
I read several railfan spotting reports on the Midwest train boards that the class unit for the Georgia Road SD70ACe fleet, unit #7700, was working eastward across the Kansas Pacific (KP). Its final destination was eventual delivery to Georgia Road. Apparently, the KP was unusually power short in the late months of this year’s grain harvest season. This season traditionally swelled train starts on all the Midwestern roads, as unit grain trains moved from collection points, to milling, storage and export across the US. KP recently resurrected its DD40AX locomotives for fast long-distance Intermodal and manifest trains as its newer power was pulling growing numbers of unit grain trains. Catching one of their elusive DD40AX units moving intermodal somewhere on the original Kansas Pacific Railroad route as I headed east to Kansas City would be a truly remarkable lifelong memory.
As luck would have it, I managed to miss the KP twice west of Denver as I followed the KP east, and my need to keep moving homeward did not leave time to sit around and wait out return KP movements. My last chance at anything KP would be on the journey back east following the original KP mainline in Kansas as I headed toward Kansas City. My first day on the road was a complete bust, seeing only a set of SD40-2 units working a grain elevator at a place name I never noted, due to its remote and rural nature. All of the towns on the KP route crowded inside vast lonely acres of farmland. Each town resembled the next, with town being little more than hamlets with old grain elevators, new CO-OP farm services and a few shops, stores and churches. It was amazing how everything looked so much the same. At times, traveling the vastness of the Grain Belt was a mind-numbing repetition with no end in sight. Aside from just camping out on the railroad overnight to see KP movements, I figured I would lose my chance to catch anything. I traveled mile after mile of empty road loosely following the equally deserted railroad from one farm town to another. As they say, “some you win, and some you lose.” My winning streak around Denver earlier in the week was definitely challenged by this point!
Somehow, I managed to be in the right place at the right time over the second day of traveling as I moved into Kansas after crossing the Colorado-Kansas state line. My scanner erupted as the KP dispatcher discussed a meet between opposing trains. I could not tell for sure, but I swear I think the “DS” (railroad parlance for train dispatcher) told the KP eastbound he would be meeting a hot westbound halfway in the middle of nowhere. Ten minutes of driving later and I could hear the KP conductor on the eastbound repeating signals. Again, I was positive I heard him say “Approach diverging, CP Halfway and holding at CP nowhere.”
Surely enough, I indeed caught up with the KP eastbound as it was crawling into the siding like sullen snake. I missed the name stencil of the interlocking, focused instead on catching the locomotive power rather than taking time to figure out if my ears were deceiving me. I soon outpaced the train to the east end where the state road crossed over the railroad and a creek. The creek made the road diverge on the other side, making it painfully obvious I would have to park on the side of the road at the bridge approach and hike my way down to the track grade. This would give me my only chance of getting pictures of the eastbound and the impending meet. I pulled over by a wind-blown “Bridge Ices in Winter” highway sign, exited my truck and gracelessly scrambled down the side of the cut under the bridge. At some point of picking my way through overgrowth, I managing to find a deer path that kept me out of the thickest stands of brush nearest the railroad right of way. In another instant I was hoofing it up the shoulder of the main, with the KP train sitting parallel to me in the siding. I was careful not to get close to the tracks, knowing the westbound could easily catch me distracted with picture-taking as I had no idea how close it might be.
I spotted the conductor meandering near the locomotive consist, casually picking up ballast rock, chunking it into the creek and watching the result. He was tall and slim; his brow hid under the brim of a wide Texas sized cowboy hat. He wore a western button-down shirt with sleeves rolled up, jeans and the required snake resistant cowboy boots one expected in rattlesnake country. His salt and pepper beard was prominent, but trimmed close, and his eyes regarded me with an equally weathered and weighted stare. I politely asked if he minded my attempt to photograph the meet. He was amenable, partially puzzled by my sudden appearance and relieved that I was not there to create trouble for him or the engineer. He was friendly enough, so I asked him about the nowhere comments I heard on the radio. In a most astute midwestern drawl that had its origins in West Texas, the conductor weaved a tale of Halfway Siding and the Middle of Nowhere.
Halfway and the middle of Nowhere were indeed what I heard him say over the radio. As he talked, I recognized his voice as the speaker over the radio earlier. In person, both his drawl and articulation were clearer, giving me a full impression of the man and his explanation. According to the transplanted Texan conductor, Kansas Pacific had need of a brand-new passing track “out in these here sticks” to meet increasing numbers of coal and grain trains running against the flow of overhead manifest traffic. The story goes that the Kansas Pacific civil engineer in charge of the new sidetrack project asked one of the local section men tasked with cutting in the switches at the new siding if he had any ideas as to what to name this new siding. There was just not much notable about the area, looking much like several hundred miles in each direction leading up to each end of the control point switches. The old section man tipped his sweat haloed hat, dried his forehead and was purported to say to the civil engineer,” Shoot, I cannot for the life of me think of anything to call this here track. We are halfway between where we stand and the middle of nowhere!” The next day the section men were attaching new station signs to the signal bunkers on each end of the siding, now aptly named CP Halfway and CP Nowhere. The rest, as they say, was history.
The KP manifest did indeed have the Georgia Road SD70ACe class unit I had read about on the railfan Internet. It led two CI Rail SD40-2 units for a three unit consist pulling 60 loads and 40 empties according to the cowboy conductor. It was not the DD40AX brace I hoped for, but according to him this was a very notable event. “These locomotives just don’t find their way out here, and never together…” the conductor explained,” we thought we had the wrong train when we drove up to it at the crew change point.”
I eagerly shot a few photos at ground level as the conductor watched from the side. As I framed a shot of the Georgia Road unit for posterity, the first of two westbound trains passed on the main behind the waiting train. It was a brace of KP power, but I did not manage any pictures as it literally appeared out of Nowhere and roared behind the standing train I was shooting in seconds. I commented about my miss, and the conductor told me a second train was right behind. I could tell the conductor was growing impatient, indicating he was not pleased to be stranded between Halfway and Nowhere waiting so long. He told me it had been a long day of train meets on the journey eastward due to all the extra grain traffic, and there was no sign he and the engineer would make the yard and mark up anytime soon. I wanted to catch the second meet from the bridge, so I expressed my thanks and backtracked up to the bridge only to miss power on the second train as I tried to untangle myself from the bushes.
In all, the day was not a complete loss. I found out “Halfway in the middle of Nowhere” actually was a place. I heard the colloquial “old saying” uttered by my elders, but never knew until this day it also had a concrete representation also. I framed a few bridge shots of the Georgia Road unit and headed back to my truck. As much as I would have loved to pace the train, I was now behind schedule and needed to make up time on the road home. Ironically, I I had somewhere to be and a short time to get there after my stop Halfway in the Middle of Nowhere on the Kansas Pacific Railroad.!
These models and pictures were built and photographed by Anthony Lorch on a diorama he created just for this photoshoot. Pictures were shot outside on the module in direct sun. This was the official builder shots of his work before he shipped the 7700 to me. He detailed, painted and finished the Georgia Road model using my drawings contained on this site and decals from my own custom artwork. This highly detailed model came a VERY long way. Thank you, Anthony!
Georgia Road Transportation 